Yes. Executive privilege is not appropriate here. And Obama has just admitted that he knew all about Fast and Furious, because it fit his gun-control agenda.

No. Issa had no right to any of the documents he demanded. Holder did nothing wrong. And if this country weren't so in love with guns, Brian Terry would still be alive.

Undecided
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Yes. Executive privilege is not appropriate here. And Obama has just admitted that he knew all about Fast and Furious, because it fit his gun-control agenda.

222 votes

76%

No. Issa had no right to any of the documents he demanded. Holder did nothing wrong. And if this country weren't so in love with guns, Brian Terry would still be alive.

30 votes

10%

Undecided

39 votes

13%

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Contempt of Congress

Last week, Chairman Darrell Issa of the House Oversight Committee
warned Attorney General Eric Holder that his committee was about to hold
him in contempt of Congress.

No, Mr. Attorney General. You are not a good witness. A good witness answers the questions asked of him. Now I ask you again…

The above was just a sample of what Issa and his colleagues gave Holder, the last time he sat before them.

So on Monday, Holder made a last-minute offer. He would meet Issa in
private and go over what documents he had about Operation Fast and
Furious, and why any of them were too sensitive for Holder to hand over.

Holder and Issa did meet yesterday afternoon at 5:00. Issa came away
angry and adamant about holding a hearing, or “markup,” about Holder and
his attitude. He told reporters that Holder had offered him nothing but
empty promises. Worse, he demanded that Issa not ask for any more
documents after the so-called “briefing.” In holding his “markup,” Issa
faithfully followed this “user’s manual on contempt of Congress.”

The “markup” began at 10:00 a.m. today. And then the putative President said something that changed everything.

Executive privilege

Eric Holder, Attorney General. Photo: US Department of Justice

Before today, Holder always said that the papers Issa wanted would
breach “deliberative privilege.” That is close to the traditional
professional-client privilege, that protects all that passes between a
professional (like a lawyer or a doctor) and his client. In this case,
Holder was saying that the papers touched on sensitive things that
passed between him and his own advisers.

But today Barack Obama said that the papers broke executive privilege. According to CNN, that claim came in a letter from Deputy Attorney General James Cole to the committee. (See also this report in The Washington Post. Note the headline: the Post, for the first time, called Fast and Furious a “scandal.”)

Executive privilege protects certain matters that pass between the President and his advisers. It applies when those matters involve protecting the United
States against invasion, infiltration, or other such danger.

That claim hit official Washington like a thunder-clap. The reason: Obama has never admitted that he knew anything about Fast and Furious until he started reading about it in the newspapers. But Issa wants documents of things that happened before the mainstream media started to cover Fast and Furious.

Fast and Furious background

Operation Fast and Furious grew out of Project Gunrunner. In it, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ordered gun dealers to let known gangsters buy guns for the gang, and not
report them through the usual channels. ATF’s field office in Phoenix,
AZ, told those dealers that they would trace those guns to the
gangsters, and Mexican authorities would arrest the gangsters, and get
the guns back, in Mexico. This did not happen. Then on December 10,
2010, Border Control Agent Brian Terry died in the line of duty. Authorities recovered two or three guns at the scene that were part of Fast and Furious.

In February of 2011, AG Holder said that ATF had never sat and
watched gangsters buy guns in this country and carry them back to
Mexico. But later in the year, Holder had to take that back.

(Today, Holder had to take something else back. Last week he
petulantly told Issa’s committee that the Bush administration had let
guns “walk,” too, in Operation Wide Receiver. A receiver is the
main body of any gun, that one attaches the stock, barrel, scope, and
other moving parts to; hence the name. Today Holder sheepishly admitted
that Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious were not the same, or even
remotely similar.)

Darrell Issa took over as Chairman of Oversight and Reform in January
of 2011. He started investigating Fast and Furious almost at once.

Today, at about 4:30 p.m., the committee took its vote. By an almost party-line vote of 23 to 17, with no member abstaining, the House Oversight Committee cited Holder for contempt of Congress. Issa will refer this matter to the full House of Representatives.

But Obama's executive privilege announcement bewilders some, and angers many others. The talking heads compared Obama to Nixon. But Obama has gone further than Nixon ever dared. He puts "throw-down" weapons in another country. A man dies. And now he is covering up for everyone involved, including just possibly himself.

Top Opinion

Fast and Furious was nothing more than a throw-down program: a way to put guns south of the border and say, "You see? American gun nuts make guns available to any gangster who comes along! Take those guns away from people!"

One man is dead on our side of the border, and hundreds more are dead on the other side. And neither Obama nor any of his defenders want to own up to what they did.

Executive privilege is only applicable in cases where the president is directly involved. I don't believe that it absolves the president from criminal acts. If it doesn't work, maybe he will invoke the commerce clause.

This is what is wrong with watching fox all day. "We know obama wants to get rid of guns because he's continued a program started by the bush administration to track gun sales to try to catch cartels - so people will be upset about gun violence - because he hasn't done anything to get rid of guns"

bush had the same program. convenient of you to forget that - or did faux leave that out?

The law on executive privilege is that any communication with the president can be covered by executive privilege. That is how the court has ruled. Any executive(ie president) can (and has - including your mr bush) used this privilege as they wish.

you mean like when bush did exactly the same thing, only more often? Where was your ire then?

I'm not happy about the extension of executive powers either so don't start with the worshipping your leader crap. I just would really like to know why you all were so fine with all of the unconstitutional, illegal, dictatorial crap bush pulled - but now you're fit to be tied over obama. How exactly does that work?

excuse me? what are you talking about? race game? I'm not playing any game at all. I'm asking you a question. I don't have an agenda. I don't think it's okay in either case.

So it's okay to break the law - both domestic and international law, and to vastly and unconstitutionally expand executive power, and to act like a dictator in a country which is supposed to have due process, laws, separation of powers, etc - if there are dead people involved.

I could go quite a few places with that, but I'm just going to defer to Mr. Franklin.

"I just would really like to know why you all were so fine with all of the unconstitutional, illegal, dictatorial crap bush pulled - but now you're fit to be tied over obama. How exactly does that work?"

Quite simply, there's a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal. Nobody disputes that suspected straw purchasers under surveillance by the ATF repeatedly bought guns that eventually fell into criminal hands. Issa and others charge that the ATF intentionally allowed guns to walk as an operational tactic. But five law-enforcement agents directly involved in Fast and Furious tell Fortune that the ATF had no such tactic. They insist they never purposefully allowed guns to be illegally trafficked. Just the opposite: They say they seized weapons whenever they could but were hamstrung by prosecutors and weak laws, which stymied them at every turn.Indeed, a six-month Fortune investigation reveals that the public case alleging that Voth and his colleagues walked guns is replete with distortions, errors, partial truths, and even some outright lies. Fortune reviewed more than 2,000 pages of confidential ATF documents and interviewed 39 people, including seven law-enforcement agents with direct knowledge of the case. Several, including Voth, are speaking out for the first time.

"splain" what you are trying to say, not sure what you are axin', TRULY...and if i read this you are INTERJECTING COLOR into a GLOBAL POLICY via UN CONFISCATION OF RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS... wow how did we get from SELLING OUR SOVEREIGNTY to your accusation of suggesting I AM RACIST, because I am disgusted by his selling our CIVIL RIGHTS to the UN for his REELECTION and NEW JOB after he leaves the US PRESIDENCY as UN SEC GEN.....OH BY THE WAY, I bitched when Clinton sold US ROCKET TECHNOLOGY to CHINESE and NORTH KOREA for CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS...

You icon is using the race card . Project Gun Runner which FF is a part of started in 2006. And guns got into the hands of these same people by 2006? So are you willing to say that Bush is a treasonous ?

Naaaaw! A "show trial"? During an election year? Whoda thought it? Did the thought ever occur to Issa that maybe there are undercover CIA agents in Mexico, and Holder's afraid another Valerie Plame scandal will occur, where one of these blabbermouths leaks the identities of these undercover agents? Sounds like a good reason to withhold that information to me...

Where is the documentation of which you speak? Your You Tube videos do not rise to "verifiable" status. Dutch documentary....30 year old videos by Liberal nut cases just do not do it for me, sorry!You think Fast and Furious is old news? Apparently you do not watch television.

I lived in Lakeport (Lake County) for several years in the late 80s. I saw all kinds of ....stuff- Bagwhan Rajneesh stealing millions in jewels and getting caught in NC and the remnants of his community in confused disarray- TMers suing Anton Levay followers for skinning and eating the local deer (which they fed and attracted- that was on Cobb Mountain) we were a bit north of you- but on Lakeport- in the really lovely place I had- much to my surprise- a house across the way exploded one night from a tubful of meth brewing-

These stupid parochial pikeys have no idea what is happening in this country- or to their own children- look at the comments below- they're in total denial-